With millions of videos across every genre of adult entertainment, Pornhub is a one-stop shop the lusty kinks of individuals and couples across the world. It hosts the most popular porn stars of all time and dominates the online market for smut. You’ve hastily typed the name into your browser more times than you can count, but what is Pornhub all about? Here are some surprising facts you never knew about the internet’s top porn destination, Pornhub.
20 fascinating facts about Pornhub
1) Pornhub shares an owner with its biggest competitors
Pornhub was launched in 2007 by developer Matt Keezer, but it was purchased in 2010 by Fabian Thylmann, a German businessman, as part of his MindGeek project. MindGeek gobbled up many of the world’s leading porn sites, including RedTube, YouPorn, Tube8, men.com, gaytube.com. In addition to purchasing streaming sites, MindGeek bought porn production companies, bringing companies like Reality Kings, Digital Playground, Babes, and Twistys under the company’s umbrella. While Pornhub is just part of MindGeek’s portfolio, it is the biggest online streaming porn site in the world.
2) Pornhub has helped save the Earth and fight breast cancer
While Pornhub could easily rest on its laurels as the biggest streaming porn site in the world, the company has worked over the years to give back. Its charitable efforts are cataloged on Pornhub Cares, a blog that lets you know how your porn habit is helping improve the world, one project at a time.
In the past few years, the company has provided a $25K scholarship for post-secondary students around the globe, raised money to help save the pandas, sponsored a Movember team, started a scholarship for women pursuing a career in STEM, donated money to saving the whales, and donated $34,854.24 to breast cancer research. Our favorite project, however, is Pornhub Gives America Wood, where the site planted a tree for every 100 videos were watched in their Big Dick category over a certain amount of time. Over the course of the campaign, Pornhub planted 15,473 trees. That’s a lot of wood.
3) Pornhub generated electricity with masturbation
With all the ups and downs of masturbation, it’s a small wonder humanity hasn’t figured out how to harness that kinetic energy for the greater good. But at least Pornhub tried. While the device never got out of beta testing, Pornhub’s Wank Band was a brilliant idea. Users would wear the band while moving their arms, then plug in devices via a USB. The best part? You know for a fact no one would ask to borrow your charger.
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4) Dragons, James Comey, and football are Pornhub’s worst enemies
In the case of Pornhub, Sunday nights are a big deal. For some reason, it ranks among its busiest times of the week, presumably as people work off some stress before getting ready for work the next day. That’s why Game of Thrones and the Super Bowl are such thorns in the company’s side.
During the premiere and finale of Game of Thrones season 7, Pornhub saw their traffic drop 4.1 percent and 5.2 percent respectively. Each episode of Season 7 brought with it a drop in Pornhub’s Sunday evening traffic, with the lowest rate coming during the May 8 airing of episode 3.
Politics can also cause numbers to drop significantly. During James Comey’s testimony before the Senate on June 8, 2017, Pornhub traffic fell 10 percent from their average 10am traffic. Meanwhile, Jeff Sessionsja will be pleased to know that his June 13, 2017, testimony in front of the Senate brought a 12.2 percent from the site’s standard 3pm traffic. Of course, politics is nothing compared to the drop that comes with football.
During the 2017 Super Bowl, Pornhub saw a massive 27 percent drop in traffic between 6pm and 10pm in overall traffic. Then at 11pm, the site was blessed with a 9 percent surge in activity compared to what normal Sunday night traffic would be at that time. Don’t worry pigskin lovers—it isn’t just you. The same thing happened to Cleveland’s Pornhub traffic during the NBA Finals this year.
5) Pornhub’s streaming traffic in 2016 could circle the Moon
In 2016, Pornhub streamed 3,100 petabytes worth of data, or 3,110,400,000 GB. That adds up to 99 GB per second. According to Pornhub, that’s enough data to fill up 194 million USB sticks, which is just enough to circle the entire moon if laid end-to-end. While the site’s traffic is worldwide, America makes up an overwhelming amount of the site’s users, with 221 page views per capita.
6) Humanity watched an absurd amount of porn on Pornhub in 2016
How much porn did the world watch in 2016? On Pornhub alone, 91,980,225,000 videos were streamed, an astounding number on its own. But that number is made even more incredible when you realize the population of the Earth in 2016 was 7,432,663,275. That means Pornhub streamed 12.3 videos for every man, woman, and child on the planet in 2016. Obviously, millions of people don’t watch porn every year, so for those of you watching an extra 12.3 videos a year for each of them we salute you, but we don’t want to shake hands.
7) Pornhub is home to both smut peddlers and scientists
Once you’ve finished watching your video content, there’s no reason to log off Pornhub. Instead head over to Pornhub Insights, a fascinating place for porn analytics research on the web. Growing a site requires careful examination of what draws users to you in the first place, and their viewing habits once they’ve arrived.
Pornhub goes the extra mile by publishing the most interesting results of that research on their blog. Curious about how much people search for Fidget Spinner porn? Read up. How about the differences between which devices women and men use when they’re firing up the site? Pornhub has you covered.
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8) Pornhub knows that legitimate sex ed is important
Whether you’re in high school or a nursing home, everyone could use a sexual education refresher. Between 2010 and 2014, instances of STDs among the elderly skyrocketed, with chlamydia increasing by 52 percent, syphilis by 65 percent, and gonorrhea by a whopping 90 percent. Pornhub cares, offering up two different (and totally safe for work) sites full of great health information for people of all ages.
The Sexual Wellness Center is aimed at everyday people, offering advice on STDs, safe sex habits, and general sexual health questions. For frisky seniors, Pornhub has created The Complete Guide to Sex After 65 with Nina Hartley. Hosted by the legendary porn star, the guide is an informative crash course for everything your grandparents forgot in the decades since they made your parents.
9) When the government came for your information, Pornhub had your back
In March 2017, Congress voted to repeal FCC privacy rules that would allow your ISP to access customer browsing data. Pornhub responded by switching their site to a HTTPS, a more secure communication protocol that gives users complete site-wide encryption. That means your ISP won’t know what lusty thoughts live in your heart, or in your Pornhub search history.
10) Pornhub loves college soccer, but college soccer doesn’t love it back
Pornhub takes education seriously, offering various scholarships over the course of its existence, but it’s also experimented with college sports. In 2014, the site sponsored the Rutherford Raiders, the soccer team of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. The team printed Pornhub’s logo on their jerseys, only to have University officials to threaten to ban the team unless they were removed.
11) Does America prefer boobs or butts? Pornhub finally let us know
Coke or Pepsi? Chocolate or vanilla? Beavis or Butthead? Some questions will never be answered, but when it comes to the age-old question of whether Americans prefer boobs or butts Pornhub has the answer. In 2014 the company, in partnership with YouPorn, ran a study of search results to determine if America wants a round thing in their face or two round things in their face. America overwhelming it turns out wants to look at butts, with just ten states coming out in favor of breasts.
12) Pornhub can help you lose weight. No, seriously.
Pornhub wants you to live an excellent, long life so you can keep watching Pornhub. We’re not going to pretend they care about you, but unlike their competition, at least Pornhub is looking out for your health. If you’re looking for a pornographic solution to your weight loss journey, Pornhub’s Bang.fit program is the first sex-based workout from a major porn company. With exercises for singles, couples, and threesomes, Bang.fit is a series of workouts you help you lose weight as your fool around. It makes sense. 10 minutes of sex can burn around 40 calories, so if you keep it up, pun intended, you might see some serious results. They even briefly sold a Bang.fit band, which is now sadly unavailable.
13) Pornhub has a channel for the blind
It’s common for people to watch porn with the sound off, but what if sound is how you experience media? If you’re a fan of Pornhub, it’s no problem at all. Pornhub offers videos for the visually impaired in its Described Video category. These videos feature a broad range of pornographic content, each accompanied by a narrated description of the action in the scene. Each scene is described in vivid detail, and if you close your eyes, it’s easy to imagine exactly what’s happening. This service is invaluable for visually impaired users who still want to experience the joys of porn. For everyone, we just suggest listening to the narration of Kim Kardashian’s sex tape, where each narrator tries their best to act professionally.
14) Pornhub’s most popular gaming character porn might surprise you
The site recently released a list of 2017’s most-searched gaming character porn, and the breakout stars were overwhelmingly Overwatch characters—D.Va, Mercy, and Tracer took the first, second, and third spots, respectively. And of the 16 gaming characters listed on the site, 13 were female. Misty from Pokémon (2.6 million searches) narrowly beat out Tomb Raider’s Lara Craft (2.2 million searches). Zelda grabbed number six, while Ash from Pokémon came in tenth. What does this imbalance say about PornHub culture? Probably nothing you don’t already know: it’s easy to conclude that the male-dominated gaming world has a proclivity for scantily-clad human females, while Ash was the only human male on the list.
15) Even when they behaved, Pornhub wasn’t welcome at the 2013 Super Bowl
It’s bad enough the Super Bowl causes Pornhub’s traffic to drop, but the sports event also blackballed the site from advertising during the big game in 2013. The Super Bowl is an advertising bonanza, but when Pornhub turned in a fully safe for TV-PG advertisement for consideration, CBS refused to air the spot. Thankfully, due to the magic of YouTube, we can all enjoy the ad today, but we will never forgive CBS for denying us the privilege of watching this video with our family during the Game Day.
16) Pornhub has its own achievements system
Pornhub has an achievement system similar to those found in video game systems, but instead of getting awards for headshots, models get rewards for videos of headshots. Whenever a model reaches certain milestones on the site, their page will be awarded a special badge that charts their climb up rankings. Awards range from the obvious, like “Amateur of the Month,” to more playful badges like “The Prophet.” An “Immortalised” badge is given when “one of your videos has been turned into an animated gif! May it be reposted until the end of times.” Pornhub brings a trademark sense of humor to these silly awards if you’re interested in taking a moment to appreciate some solid copywriting.
17) Not all performers love Pornhub
While Pornhub has opened up plenty of doors to profit within the porn that official piracy closed, not every performer is happy with their domination of the industry. When they first appeared at the AVN Awards in 2015 their presence was met with derision from some performers.“Fuck them,” indie performer Courtney Trouble told the Daily Dot. “I don’t like their parent company [Mindgeek]. I don’t like them.” Porn legend Jenna Haze had even harsher words for the company in 2017, blaming them for her retirement. Haze tweeted out, “Please don’t support sites like porn hub. They are a tube site that pirates content that other adult companies produce. It’s like Napster!” When asked to clarify she explained, “Well they steal my content from my company, as do many other tube sites. It’s why I don’t produce or direct anymore.” Pornhub may have opened plenty of doors, but for performers like Haze the opportunities weren’t worth the cost.
18) Fortnite is a surprisingly big search at the moment
Fortnite’s explosively addictive free multiplayer action has helped the game develop a ferocious following since its release. What might surprise you is how many gamers think of the title when they’re looking for release. The game, which first hit stores in July 2017, had a slow start in the Pornhub search results. In fact, it didn’t even register until Battle Royale mode was released. Since then, the floodgates have opened, with searches steadily increasing month over month. When Drake played the game on Twitch in March it didn’t just break Twitch records, it sent a flurry of busy hands over to Pornhub. Searches for Fortnite increased 824% above average after the 6God hit the game. It’s likely the trend will spike again with the new Fortnite shopping cart feature. Hopefully, players have the foresight to build a courtesy wall before they get busy.
19) Donald Trump has been very good for Stormy Daniels
Perhaps not surprisingly, Donald Trump has influenced the nation’s masturbatory viewing patterns. When news of the president’s alleged affair with porn icon Stormy Daniels broke in January 2018, searches for Daniels skyrocketed. In just five days Daniels went from 2,500 searches per day to over 2 million. Trump has been the gift the keeps on giving for her search traffic. Every time a new story breaks her name leaps back up on Pornhub, both in America and around the world.
20) People are much less likely to turn to PornHub if death is imminent
No one really knows how they’ll respond to the idea that death is on its way. Would you call your family? Or would you say the hell with it, and settle down in front of some good old fashioned pornography to come as you go? People joke about the how they’d cope with impending doom, but thanks to the false ballistic missile alert Hawaii faced in January of 2018, Pornhub has the answer. We’ll let Pornhub provide the science.
“Based on real-time, per-minute pageviews, and compared to levels on the previous two Saturdays, our statisticians found a precipitous drop in traffic at 8:07am immediately after the warning was sent out. By 8:23am, traffic was a massive -77% below that of a typical Saturday.”
It turns out almost no one found themselves horny when they thought death was on the way. However, the same can’t be said for when people realized they had more life left to live. According to Pornhub once the alert was identified as a false alarm “pageviews surged +48% above typical levels at 9:01am.” It turns out no one wants to mourn with their pants down.
Editor’s note: This article is regularly updated for relevance.
